Sapphique

After reading Incarceron by Catherine Fisher, I was really looking forward to reading Sapphique. With its living prison, memorable characters, and strange, other-wordly vibe, I figured this was going to be a wild ride. And it was.

I just don't have a clue as to what actually happened here.

The story picks up where the first book left off. Finn has escaped from the living prison, Incarceron, only to find himself trapped in a different prison. Is he the lost Prince Giles, like Claudia, the daughter of Incarceron's Warden, believes? Could he really be the heir to the throne? And what about Finn's friends, Keiro and Attia, still trapped inside the Prison? What about the political machinations of Queen Sia's court, trapped forever in an illusion of a time long gone. And what of Incarceron itself? What strange plot is it hatching?

I finished reading this book a few days ago and I'm still stumped by it. I have a feeling that "something significant" happened in this book, that Fisher is trying to say something deep about humanity and junk, but for the life of me, I can't decode it. It was an okay book, I suppose, but everything got started so suddenly that I was left wondering if I missed something.

All in all, this book didn't recapture the magic of the first one. It was a fun read, but nothing memorable.